Samara Klar
Biographic Data
| ID | 920806 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Samara Klar |
| GIVEN NAMES | Samara |
| FAMILY NAME | Klar |
| SIGNATURE | KLAR S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Arizona |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4863-9949 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 955 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Measuring affective polarization: Matching concepts to measures
Affective polarization is the extent to which partisans like their own party relative to their dislike of opposing parties. High levels of affective polarization in the United States and many other countries have prompted widespread scholarly interest and practical concern. Yet, despite nearly 15 years of scholarship, significant uncertainty remains about how best to measure affective polarization. We offer a comprehensive review focused on the m…
How Cross-Cutting Ties Reduce Affective Polarization: Evidence from Latino Americans
A3.1 - Development of a Biosensor Platform Measuring the Electrical Resistance in a Tailor-Made System for Biological Barriers to Assess the Barrier Integrity
Women shaping behavioural science
The Policy Blame Game: How Polarization Distorts Democratic Accountability across the Local, State, and Federal Level
Democratic accountability relies on voters to punish their representatives for policies they dislike. Yet, a separation-of-powers system can make it hard to know who is to blame, and partisan biases further distort voters’ evaluations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, precautionary policies were put into place sometimes by governors, sometimes by mayors, and sometimes by no one at all, allowing us to identify when voters hold out-party versus in-par…
Who Are Leaners? How True Independents Differ from the Weakest Partisans and Why It Matters
Independents who lean toward a party constitute a plurality of Americans. Despite their reluctance to identify as partisans, scholars find that “leaners” look much like partisans with respect to their voting behavior, civic engagement, and policy preferences. Yet, existing literature does not consider the possibility that different factors lead Democrats and Republicans to opt for an independent label. We consider heterogeneity in what leads peop…
(Mis)estimating Affective Polarization
Affective polarization—the tendency of ordinary partisans to dislike and distrust those from the other party—is a defining feature of contemporary American politics. High levels of out-party animus stem, in part, from misperceptions of the other party’s voters. Specifically, individuals misestimate the ideological extremity and political engagement of typical out-partisans. When partisans are asked about “Democrats” or the “Republican Party,” the…
The Competing Influence of Policy Content and Political Cues: Cross-Border Evidence from the United States and Canada
When individuals evaluate policies, they consider both the policy's content and its endorsers. In this study, we investigate the conditions under which these sometimes competing factors guide preferences. In an effort to combat the spread of COVID-19, American President Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau bilaterally agreed to close their shared border to refugee claimants and asylum seekers. These ideologically opposed leaders endorsing a …
The #MeToo movement and attitudes toward President Trump in the wake of a sexual misconduct allegation
Did sexual misconduct allegations against President Trump affect evaluations of him, particularly among supporters of the #MeToo Movement? In this research note, we present two-wave panel data from a nation-wide sample of 800 Americans conducted immediately before and after a widely publicized accusation of sexual misconduct against Trump. By comparing individuals who had heard about the new accusation against those who had not, we identify if an…
Notes from the Editors: Apsr
veryone knows that social media can be an "outrage machine": a dark hole of blistering criticism and rejection that fosters "compare and despair" syndrome by inviting us to judge our inner selves against others' Instagram pics (Haidt and Twenge 2021). However, it also has the potential to connect people in new and dynamic ways, helping to build community across distance and difference
How Affective Polarization Undermines Support for Democratic Norms
Does affective polarization—the tendency to view opposing partisans negatively and co-partisans positively—undermine support for democratic norms? We argue that it does, through two mechanisms. First, in an age of elite polarization, norms have been politicized. This leads affectively polarized partisans to oppose particular constitutional protections when their party is in power but support them when their party is out of power, via a cue-taking…
Partisan‐Motivated Evaluations of Sexual Misconduct and the Mitigating Role of the #MeToo Movement
When individuals evaluate something as serious as sexual misconduct allegations in politics, they are often motivated to defend their party—but outside forces can reduce these partisan biases. We bridge work from political psychology with studies of social movements to theorize how the #MeToo movement helps to mitigate partisan‐motivated evaluations of sexual misconduct. With a two‐wave survey experiment, we find that partisans are more likely to…
How Affective Polarization Shapes Americans’ Political Beliefs: A Study of Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic
Affective polarization – partisans’ dislike and distrust of those from the other party – has reached historically high levels in the United States. While numerous studies estimate its effect on apolitical outcomes (e.g., dating and economic transactions), we know much less about its effects on political beliefs. We argue that those who exhibit high levels of affective polarization politicize ostensibly apolitical issues and actors. An experiment …
Turn and Face the Strange Ch-Ch-Changes: How an Evolving America Activates Identity Politics
Sorting the News: How Ranking by Popularity Polarizes Our Politics
Most people receive political news from social media platforms. Unlike traditional media, these platforms algorithmically determine the order in which news is presented, in part relying on an article's popularity (i.e. number of likes, shares, and comments) to determine its ranking. To what extent does sorting the news by popularity influence people's attitudes toward politics? With two large, nationally representative samples of adults and a nov…
Affective polarization, local contexts and public opinion in America
Affective Consistency and Sorting
Objective Sorting is often portrayed as a mechanistic response to elite polarization: individuals recognize salient differences between the parties and match their preferences accordingly. Much less is known, however, about the psychological and motivational processes that contribute to it. In particular, how might affective reactions to elites shape convergence among political preferences? Method To explore the relationship between the consisten…
Studying Identities with Experiments: Weighing the Risk of Posttreatment Bias Against Priming Effects
Scholars from across the social sciences argue that identities – such as race, ethnicity, and gender – are highly influential over individuals’ attitudes, actions, and evaluations. Experiments are becoming particularly integral for allowing identity scholars to explain how these social attachments shape our political behavior. In this letter, we draw attention to how identity scholars should approach the common practice of assessing moderators, m…
Exploring the Psychological Foundations of Ideological and Social Sorting
Americans are sorting ideologically: Liberals and conservatives are more likely to respectively identify as Democrats and Republicans. They are sorting socially as well: Partisans like and trust copartisans more than opposing partisans. Existing explanations for these phenomena rely on exogenous factors, such as elite polarization. But exogenous explanations cannot fully explain variation in sorting. We argue that psychological characteristics ca…
Intersectionality and Engagement among the LGBTQ+ Community
As the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) community makes progress toward attaining equal rights, a growing body of scholarly attention is focusing on this increasingly visible minority group. Yet studies of attitudes among LGBTQ+ Americans themselves remain limited because of small sample sizes and scarce data. As a result, scholarly work on LGBTQ+ issues is almost entirely devoted to measuring straight America’s opinions. I…
Affective Polarization or Partisan Disdain
Recent scholarship suggests that American partisans dislike other party members so much that partisanship has become the main social divide in modern politics. We argue that at least one measure of this “affective polarization” conflates a dislike for members of the other party with a dislike for partisanship in general. The measure asks people how they feel about their child marrying someone from another party. What seems like negative affect to…
When Common Identities Decrease Trust: An Experimental Study of Partisan Women
How does sharing a common gender identity affect the relationship between Democratic and Republican women? Social psychological work suggests that common ingroup identities unite competing factions. After closely examining the conditions upon which the common ingroup identity model depends, I argue that opposing partisans who share the superordinate identity of being a woman will not reduce their intergroup biases. Instead, I predict that raising…
The Effect of Network Structure on Preference Formation
How does network structure influence opinion? Relying on theories of preference formation and social networks, we randomize a sample of adults into networks that vary in structure. In one (a clustered lattice), individuals' connections tend to be connected to each other; in another (a random network), individuals' connections tend not to be connected, instead providing access to different regions of the network. We seed messages that reflect comp…
Women Also Know Stuff: Meta-Level Mentoring to Battle Gender Bias in Political Science
Women know stuff. Yet, all too often, they are underrepresented in political science meetings, syllabi, and editorial boards. To counter the implicit bias that leads to women’s underrepresentation, to ensure that women’s expertise is included and shared, and to improve the visibility of women in political science, in February 2016 we launched the “Women Also Know Stuff” initiative, which features a crowd-sourced website and an active Twitter feed…
Independent Politics: How American Disdain for Parties Leads to Political Inaction
The number of independent voters in America increases each year, yet they remain misunderstood by both media and academics. Media describe independents as pivotal for electoral outcomes. Political scientists conclude that independents are merely 'undercover partisans': people who secretly hold partisan beliefs and are thus politically inconsequential. Both the pundits and the political scientists are wrong, argue the authors. They show that many …
How Affective Polarization Undermines Support for Democratic Norms
Does affective polarization—the tendency to view opposing partisans negatively and co-partisans positively—undermine support for democratic norms? We argue that it does, through two mechanisms. First, in an age of elite polarization, norms have been politicized. This leads affectively polarized partisans to oppose particular constitutional protections when their party is in power but support them when their party is out of power, via a cue-taking…
Affective Polarization or Partisan Disdain
Recent scholarship suggests that American partisans dislike other party members so much that partisanship has become the main social divide in modern politics. We argue that at least one measure of this “affective polarization” conflates a dislike for members of the other party with a dislike for partisanship in general. The measure asks people how they feel about their child marrying someone from another party. What seems like negative affect to…
Partisanship in a Social Setting
No factor appears more powerful in explaining how individuals evaluate political information and form political preferences than partisanship. Yet, virtually all work on the effects of partisanship on preference formation neglects the crucial role of social settings. In this study, I examine how social settings can fundamentally change the influence of partisanship on preferences. I demonstrate that, in fact, social settings exert an independent …
The Influence of Competing Identity Primes on Political Preferences
In our increasingly diverse society, most Americans identify with more than one group. These multiple identities often align with conflicting policy choices, such as when a Democratic parent may support increased social services spending from a partisan perspective but may also worry about the increasing national debt as a parent. Given the significance of identity, political elites often work to prime identities that will win over the most suppo…
Affective polarization, local contexts and public opinion in America
(Mis)estimating Affective Polarization
Affective polarization—the tendency of ordinary partisans to dislike and distrust those from the other party—is a defining feature of contemporary American politics. High levels of out-party animus stem, in part, from misperceptions of the other party’s voters. Specifically, individuals misestimate the ideological extremity and political engagement of typical out-partisans. When partisans are asked about “Democrats” or the “Republican Party,” the…
Studying Identities with Experiments: Weighing the Risk of Posttreatment Bias Against Priming Effects
Scholars from across the social sciences argue that identities – such as race, ethnicity, and gender – are highly influential over individuals’ attitudes, actions, and evaluations. Experiments are becoming particularly integral for allowing identity scholars to explain how these social attachments shape our political behavior. In this letter, we draw attention to how identity scholars should approach the common practice of assessing moderators, m…
How Affective Polarization Shapes Americans’ Political Beliefs: A Study of Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic
Affective polarization – partisans’ dislike and distrust of those from the other party – has reached historically high levels in the United States. While numerous studies estimate its effect on apolitical outcomes (e.g., dating and economic transactions), we know much less about its effects on political beliefs. We argue that those who exhibit high levels of affective polarization politicize ostensibly apolitical issues and actors. An experiment …
When Common Identities Decrease Trust: An Experimental Study of Partisan Women
How does sharing a common gender identity affect the relationship between Democratic and Republican women? Social psychological work suggests that common ingroup identities unite competing factions. After closely examining the conditions upon which the common ingroup identity model depends, I argue that opposing partisans who share the superordinate identity of being a woman will not reduce their intergroup biases. Instead, I predict that raising…
Identity and Engagement among Political Independents in America
Political behavior among independents has been documented for decades, yet we are left with limited insight into their political engagement. What, if anything, motivates independents to engage in politics? In this study, I apply psychological theories of attitude importance to explain high variation in political‐engagement levels among independents. Using two recent datasets, I find engagement levels are comparable across independents and partisa…
A Multidimensional Study of Ideological Preferences and Priorities among the American Public
Political ideology is not always best measured along a unidimensional spectrum. With a multidimensional construct, we are better able to understand the complexities of Americans’ ideological views. This research note presents new survey data from a nationally representative sample of over 2,000 Americans. The survey asks respondents to place themselves on distinct ideological scales regarding social and economic issues, then to prioritize the imp…
Partisan‐Motivated Evaluations of Sexual Misconduct and the Mitigating Role of the #MeToo Movement
When individuals evaluate something as serious as sexual misconduct allegations in politics, they are often motivated to defend their party—but outside forces can reduce these partisan biases. We bridge work from political psychology with studies of social movements to theorize how the #MeToo movement helps to mitigate partisan‐motivated evaluations of sexual misconduct. With a two‐wave survey experiment, we find that partisans are more likely to…
Intersectionality and Engagement among the LGBTQ+ Community
As the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) community makes progress toward attaining equal rights, a growing body of scholarly attention is focusing on this increasingly visible minority group. Yet studies of attitudes among LGBTQ+ Americans themselves remain limited because of small sample sizes and scarce data. As a result, scholarly work on LGBTQ+ issues is almost entirely devoted to measuring straight America’s opinions. I…
The Competing Influence of Policy Content and Political Cues: Cross-Border Evidence from the United States and Canada
When individuals evaluate policies, they consider both the policy's content and its endorsers. In this study, we investigate the conditions under which these sometimes competing factors guide preferences. In an effort to combat the spread of COVID-19, American President Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau bilaterally agreed to close their shared border to refugee claimants and asylum seekers. These ideologically opposed leaders endorsing a …
Sorting the News: How Ranking by Popularity Polarizes Our Politics
Most people receive political news from social media platforms. Unlike traditional media, these platforms algorithmically determine the order in which news is presented, in part relying on an article's popularity (i.e. number of likes, shares, and comments) to determine its ranking. To what extent does sorting the news by popularity influence people's attitudes toward politics? With two large, nationally representative samples of adults and a nov…
Exploring the Psychological Foundations of Ideological and Social Sorting
Americans are sorting ideologically: Liberals and conservatives are more likely to respectively identify as Democrats and Republicans. They are sorting socially as well: Partisans like and trust copartisans more than opposing partisans. Existing explanations for these phenomena rely on exogenous factors, such as elite polarization. But exogenous explanations cannot fully explain variation in sorting. We argue that psychological characteristics ca…
The influence of threatening parental primes on mothers' versus fathers' policy preferences
Citizens' personal identity groups exert a powerful influence over their preferences, particularly when their identity-related interests are perceived to be under threat. In American political rhetoric, parents are an identity group frequently targeted with fear and anxiety in the hopes of attracting support for particular policies. In this paper, we argue that these appeals to parental concerns do not influence all parents in the same way. With …
The Effect of Network Structure on Preference Formation
How does network structure influence opinion? Relying on theories of preference formation and social networks, we randomize a sample of adults into networks that vary in structure. In one (a clustered lattice), individuals' connections tend to be connected to each other; in another (a random network), individuals' connections tend not to be connected, instead providing access to different regions of the network. We seed messages that reflect comp…
The Policy Blame Game: How Polarization Distorts Democratic Accountability across the Local, State, and Federal Level
Democratic accountability relies on voters to punish their representatives for policies they dislike. Yet, a separation-of-powers system can make it hard to know who is to blame, and partisan biases further distort voters’ evaluations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, precautionary policies were put into place sometimes by governors, sometimes by mayors, and sometimes by no one at all, allowing us to identify when voters hold out-party versus in-par…
The #MeToo movement and attitudes toward President Trump in the wake of a sexual misconduct allegation
Did sexual misconduct allegations against President Trump affect evaluations of him, particularly among supporters of the #MeToo Movement? In this research note, we present two-wave panel data from a nation-wide sample of 800 Americans conducted immediately before and after a widely publicized accusation of sexual misconduct against Trump. By comparing individuals who had heard about the new accusation against those who had not, we identify if an…
Affective Consistency and Sorting
Objective Sorting is often portrayed as a mechanistic response to elite polarization: individuals recognize salient differences between the parties and match their preferences accordingly. Much less is known, however, about the psychological and motivational processes that contribute to it. In particular, how might affective reactions to elites shape convergence among political preferences? Method To explore the relationship between the consisten…
Social Desirability Bias in the 2016 Presidential Election
Partisanship is a stable trait but expressions of partisan preferences can vary according to social context. When particular preferences become socially undesirable, some individuals refrain from expressing them in public, even in relatively anonymous settings such as surveys and polls. In this study, we rely on the psychological trait of self-monitoring to show that Americans who are more likely to adjust their behaviors to comply with social no…
Who Are Leaners? How True Independents Differ from the Weakest Partisans and Why It Matters
Independents who lean toward a party constitute a plurality of Americans. Despite their reluctance to identify as partisans, scholars find that “leaners” look much like partisans with respect to their voting behavior, civic engagement, and policy preferences. Yet, existing literature does not consider the possibility that different factors lead Democrats and Republicans to opt for an independent label. We consider heterogeneity in what leads peop…
Women Also Know Stuff: Meta-Level Mentoring to Battle Gender Bias in Political Science
Women know stuff. Yet, all too often, they are underrepresented in political science meetings, syllabi, and editorial boards. To counter the implicit bias that leads to women’s underrepresentation, to ensure that women’s expertise is included and shared, and to improve the visibility of women in political science, in February 2016 we launched the “Women Also Know Stuff” initiative, which features a crowd-sourced website and an active Twitter feed…
Measuring Drug and Alcohol Use Among College Student‐Athletes
Objective Few issues in athletics today receive more attention than drug and alcohol usage, especially when it comes to college athletics. We seek to address self‐report biases related to drug usage and heavy drinking. Methods We employ an experimental measurement technique. Results Our results suggest that a greater percentage of student‐athletes from a major conference knowingly engage in these two behaviors than self‐reports indicate. Specific…
The Influence of Competing Identity Primes on Political Preferences
In our increasingly diverse society, most Americans identify with more than one group. These multiple identities often align with conflicting policy choices, such as when a Democratic parent may support increased social services spending from a partisan perspective but may also worry about the increasing national debt as a parent. Given the significance of identity, political elites often work to prime identities that will win over the most suppo…
The influence of threatening parental primes on mothers' versus fathers' policy preferences
Citizens' personal identity groups exert a powerful influence over their preferences, particularly when their identity-related interests are perceived to be under threat. In American political rhetoric, parents are an identity group frequently targeted with fear and anxiety in the hopes of attracting support for particular policies. In this paper, we argue that these appeals to parental concerns do not influence all parents in the same way. With …
A Multidimensional Study of Ideological Preferences and Priorities among the American Public
Political ideology is not always best measured along a unidimensional spectrum. With a multidimensional construct, we are better able to understand the complexities of Americans’ ideological views. This research note presents new survey data from a nationally representative sample of over 2,000 Americans. The survey asks respondents to place themselves on distinct ideological scales regarding social and economic issues, then to prioritize the imp…
Identity and Engagement among Political Independents in America
Political behavior among independents has been documented for decades, yet we are left with limited insight into their political engagement. What, if anything, motivates independents to engage in politics? In this study, I apply psychological theories of attitude importance to explain high variation in political‐engagement levels among independents. Using two recent datasets, I find engagement levels are comparable across independents and partisa…
Partisanship in a Social Setting
No factor appears more powerful in explaining how individuals evaluate political information and form political preferences than partisanship. Yet, virtually all work on the effects of partisanship on preference formation neglects the crucial role of social settings. In this study, I examine how social settings can fundamentally change the influence of partisanship on preferences. I demonstrate that, in fact, social settings exert an independent …
Measuring Drug and Alcohol Use Among College Student‐Athletes
Objective Few issues in athletics today receive more attention than drug and alcohol usage, especially when it comes to college athletics. We seek to address self‐report biases related to drug usage and heavy drinking. Methods We employ an experimental measurement technique. Results Our results suggest that a greater percentage of student‐athletes from a major conference knowingly engage in these two behaviors than self‐reports indicate. Specific…
The influence of competing organisational appeals on individual donations
Policy scholars and the public alike are concerned not only with the actions policymakers take in the legislature but also with the money that enables policies to reach the legislative agenda. A significant portion of these funds come from individual donors. We examine how appeals from public policy organisations influence donation behaviour. Existing research studies the effectiveness of appeals in isolation, but few studies consider the competi…
Independent Politics: How American Disdain for Parties Leads to Political Inaction
The number of independent voters in America increases each year, yet they remain misunderstood by both media and academics. Media describe independents as pivotal for electoral outcomes. Political scientists conclude that independents are merely 'undercover partisans': people who secretly hold partisan beliefs and are thus politically inconsequential. Both the pundits and the political scientists are wrong, argue the authors. They show that many …
Social Desirability Bias in the 2016 Presidential Election
Partisanship is a stable trait but expressions of partisan preferences can vary according to social context. When particular preferences become socially undesirable, some individuals refrain from expressing them in public, even in relatively anonymous settings such as surveys and polls. In this study, we rely on the psychological trait of self-monitoring to show that Americans who are more likely to adjust their behaviors to comply with social no…
The Effect of Network Structure on Preference Formation
How does network structure influence opinion? Relying on theories of preference formation and social networks, we randomize a sample of adults into networks that vary in structure. In one (a clustered lattice), individuals' connections tend to be connected to each other; in another (a random network), individuals' connections tend not to be connected, instead providing access to different regions of the network. We seed messages that reflect comp…
Women Also Know Stuff: Meta-Level Mentoring to Battle Gender Bias in Political Science
Women know stuff. Yet, all too often, they are underrepresented in political science meetings, syllabi, and editorial boards. To counter the implicit bias that leads to women’s underrepresentation, to ensure that women’s expertise is included and shared, and to improve the visibility of women in political science, in February 2016 we launched the “Women Also Know Stuff” initiative, which features a crowd-sourced website and an active Twitter feed…
Intersectionality and Engagement among the LGBTQ+ Community
As the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) community makes progress toward attaining equal rights, a growing body of scholarly attention is focusing on this increasingly visible minority group. Yet studies of attitudes among LGBTQ+ Americans themselves remain limited because of small sample sizes and scarce data. As a result, scholarly work on LGBTQ+ issues is almost entirely devoted to measuring straight America’s opinions. I…
Affective Polarization or Partisan Disdain
Recent scholarship suggests that American partisans dislike other party members so much that partisanship has become the main social divide in modern politics. We argue that at least one measure of this “affective polarization” conflates a dislike for members of the other party with a dislike for partisanship in general. The measure asks people how they feel about their child marrying someone from another party. What seems like negative affect to…
When Common Identities Decrease Trust: An Experimental Study of Partisan Women
How does sharing a common gender identity affect the relationship between Democratic and Republican women? Social psychological work suggests that common ingroup identities unite competing factions. After closely examining the conditions upon which the common ingroup identity model depends, I argue that opposing partisans who share the superordinate identity of being a woman will not reduce their intergroup biases. Instead, I predict that raising…
Affective Consistency and Sorting
Objective Sorting is often portrayed as a mechanistic response to elite polarization: individuals recognize salient differences between the parties and match their preferences accordingly. Much less is known, however, about the psychological and motivational processes that contribute to it. In particular, how might affective reactions to elites shape convergence among political preferences? Method To explore the relationship between the consisten…
Studying Identities with Experiments: Weighing the Risk of Posttreatment Bias Against Priming Effects
Scholars from across the social sciences argue that identities – such as race, ethnicity, and gender – are highly influential over individuals’ attitudes, actions, and evaluations. Experiments are becoming particularly integral for allowing identity scholars to explain how these social attachments shape our political behavior. In this letter, we draw attention to how identity scholars should approach the common practice of assessing moderators, m…
Exploring the Psychological Foundations of Ideological and Social Sorting
Americans are sorting ideologically: Liberals and conservatives are more likely to respectively identify as Democrats and Republicans. They are sorting socially as well: Partisans like and trust copartisans more than opposing partisans. Existing explanations for these phenomena rely on exogenous factors, such as elite polarization. But exogenous explanations cannot fully explain variation in sorting. We argue that psychological characteristics ca…
How Affective Polarization Shapes Americans’ Political Beliefs: A Study of Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic
Affective polarization – partisans’ dislike and distrust of those from the other party – has reached historically high levels in the United States. While numerous studies estimate its effect on apolitical outcomes (e.g., dating and economic transactions), we know much less about its effects on political beliefs. We argue that those who exhibit high levels of affective polarization politicize ostensibly apolitical issues and actors. An experiment …
Turn and Face the Strange Ch-Ch-Changes: How an Evolving America Activates Identity Politics
Sorting the News: How Ranking by Popularity Polarizes Our Politics
Most people receive political news from social media platforms. Unlike traditional media, these platforms algorithmically determine the order in which news is presented, in part relying on an article's popularity (i.e. number of likes, shares, and comments) to determine its ranking. To what extent does sorting the news by popularity influence people's attitudes toward politics? With two large, nationally representative samples of adults and a nov…
Affective polarization, local contexts and public opinion in America
The #MeToo movement and attitudes toward President Trump in the wake of a sexual misconduct allegation
Did sexual misconduct allegations against President Trump affect evaluations of him, particularly among supporters of the #MeToo Movement? In this research note, we present two-wave panel data from a nation-wide sample of 800 Americans conducted immediately before and after a widely publicized accusation of sexual misconduct against Trump. By comparing individuals who had heard about the new accusation against those who had not, we identify if an…
Notes from the Editors: Apsr
veryone knows that social media can be an "outrage machine": a dark hole of blistering criticism and rejection that fosters "compare and despair" syndrome by inviting us to judge our inner selves against others' Instagram pics (Haidt and Twenge 2021). However, it also has the potential to connect people in new and dynamic ways, helping to build community across distance and difference
How Affective Polarization Undermines Support for Democratic Norms
Does affective polarization—the tendency to view opposing partisans negatively and co-partisans positively—undermine support for democratic norms? We argue that it does, through two mechanisms. First, in an age of elite polarization, norms have been politicized. This leads affectively polarized partisans to oppose particular constitutional protections when their party is in power but support them when their party is out of power, via a cue-taking…
Partisan‐Motivated Evaluations of Sexual Misconduct and the Mitigating Role of the #MeToo Movement
When individuals evaluate something as serious as sexual misconduct allegations in politics, they are often motivated to defend their party—but outside forces can reduce these partisan biases. We bridge work from political psychology with studies of social movements to theorize how the #MeToo movement helps to mitigate partisan‐motivated evaluations of sexual misconduct. With a two‐wave survey experiment, we find that partisans are more likely to…
Political science (27 works) · Psychology (27 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (25 works) · Politics (24 works) · Social Psychology (23 works) · Social Psychology (21 works) · Law (16 works) · Law (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (12 works)